


Giving and Receiving

by Owlship



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gift Giving, Max Comes Back, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Post-Canon, Vuvalini Customs, what a pretentious summary for a bit of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 12:06:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14769290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlship/pseuds/Owlship
Summary: The exchanges started with a metal rasp, and then a kill-switch sequence, moved to guns and tactics and a steady shoulder, a sling full of ammunition, barreled onwards to a loaded motorbike, a way home, blood flowing from one body to another, a name. It might have ended there, with something like redemption, but whenever Max visits he never does so empty handed- and so it continues.





	Giving and Receiving

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [on tumblr](http://v8roadworrier.tumblr.com/post/136001391406/fluff-prompt-post-revolution-furiosa-and-max)!

The exchanges started with a metal rasp, and then a kill-switch sequence, moved to guns and tactics and a steady shoulder, a sling full of ammunition, barreled onwards to a loaded motorbike, a way home, blood flowing from one body to another, a name. It might have ended there, with something like redemption, but whenever Max visits he never does so empty handed- and so it continues.

Furiosa has no use for frivolous things, admires beauty most when it's part of something functional, honed for a purpose. Which does not at all explain how she's come to possess a handful of round glass beads, shiny, smooth, full of glimmering strands of color- and utterly without purpose as they catch the light off her windowsill. Or why there's a small menagerie of cleverly made scrap-metal animals taking up space on her battered desk. The corded circlet around her wrist could, potentially, serve as a rope in a pinch if unraveled, but more often than not it merely catches against metal when she plunges her hands into a rig's mechanics, more liability than asset.

They show up in the oddest places, and always just when she is sure Max has finally put a rest to the game. A slim yellowed wordburger, full not of words but pictures, smudged and imperfect smears of color that seem to show places she might have seen in a dream, tucked between the cushion of her trade rig. A shining knife, delicate but sharp enough that she doesn't even feel the bite when she tests the blade against her thumb, left propped against the top ledge of the doorjamb. Somehow between one fireside story and the next there's an extra weight tugging at her belt, a tiny metal car the right density to have been made from spent bullets, slipped into one of her storage pouches without her hackles raising at the intrusion.

Furiosa's not sure she can call her offerings gifts, the same way his are. They're practical- leather he'll inevitably need to patch his increasingly raggedy coat with, herbs to keep away vermin so he doesn't need to be shaved head-to-toe after staying with questionable traders again, boots that are neither scorched nor worn through nor soaked in dog piss. Parts for his car don't count, surely, not when they install them shoulder-to-shoulder in easy silence, nor do the guns and ammo she slips into the niches of his ride. He's always under-armed, her Fool is, relies too much on his ability to get away- and he can't even do that in a vehicle that's liable to fail for want of parts and maintenance.

All the same, each one earns her a crooked smile when she hands it off, a softening to his face even the girls at their charming and wittiest can't elicit, the sense that there's something more to it than either one has words for.

 

Even when surrounded by people Max can go days without speaking, content with wordless hums and grunts, shrugs and gestures. The Dag needles at him when he shows up, asks if his tongue's been cut out while he was away, but even her teasing is good-natured, understanding the shape of his silences.

"It'll be a thousand days soon," Toast says during one of Max's visits, a night when it's just the fury road's survivors circled around a firepit under the open sky of the gardens. Forthright and Edie have scrounged up a bottle of truly deplorable moonshine for the occasion, pass it around until the atmosphere is a strangely giddy sort of melancholy, grateful to be alive and mournful of those who didn't make it back.

"Really- a _thousand_?" Cheedo echoes disbelievingly, tries to count off on her fingers for a moment before giving it up as a bad job, always the earliest to be tipped over by any sort of drink.

Furiosa stretches out next to the fire, rubs her shoulder halfheartedly where the weight of her metal arm digs in, lets the conversation flow around her. There's too many memories tied up with those bare few days for her to speak lightly of it, simultaneously some of the best and worst things that have happened to her in recent memory.

"We should do something to mark it," Capable says thoughtfully, "Will the oranges be ripe by then? It'd be nice to have a treat for the Boys."

Furiosa couldn't name the sense that told her that Max was inching closer- the rustle of his clothes, perhaps, or the smell of his skin- but she doesn't startle when one of his hands lands on the slope of her shoulder. She hums in response to the unspoken offer, lets herself relax into the body heat he throws off as he starts kneading the sore muscles of her arm, her back.

The Dag snorts in reply to Capable's question, informs her that the citrus trees were only just being pollinated, something "you would _know_ if your thumbs weren't blacker than a revhead's."

It seems hard to believe that it's been so many days, that it hasn't been longer. When the 'shine comes her way again Furiosa takes another pull, lifts the jug up over her shoulder to offer to Max. Though she doesn't bother looking she knows when he shakes his head, the movement stirring air to waft over her skin. Feels it even more keenly when he huffs out an amused breath after she shrugs and drinks down his share for him, astringent burn going straight to her head like a hit of nitrous.

Between the rotgut and the rough pleasure of Max's hand untangling her knotted muscles Furiosa loses track of the conversation entirely, drifts drowsily in the warmth of the fire and companionship. It's a gift of its own, that she can feel safe enough to pass off guard duties for a while.

 

When she wakes in the morning, there's a slightly crushed spray of orange blossoms left next to her on the mattress, the space Max sleeps when he visits. Furiosa strokes one soft white petal with a fingertip and tries to recall the night before, if there had been anything to prompt such an unusual gift. Flowers are pretty for a day or two but wither swiftly once plucked, yield no seeds for the future.

It puzzles her as she goes about her day, wondering if there's some meaning behind it, a message she's supposed to divine. She's never looked for one in his gifts before, had mostly been surprised that they continued to come at all, but the thought occurs to her and doesn't quite let go.

There's something about flowers that she remembers from her childhood, Furiosa thinks, but it slips away from her grasp.

Max doesn't linger long enough to see the anniversary of their triumph, melts back away into the wastes with a shiny new clutch disk, a bottle of that wretched moonshine, a cache of shotgun shells tucked into the remains of the dashboard console. She thinks about slipping an orange flower into the car for him to find, or a bloom from one of the other plants, but decides against it. She doesn't know if it's meant to be a signal, wouldn't want to send up the wrong flare in return- whatever that might even bring.

The orange blossoms shrivel and turn brown, dry wafer-thin and delicate enough to fall at the slightest touch. Furiosa refuses to look at it as a metaphor for anything. They're just flowers, and flowers wilt.

It's possible that she ends up dwelling on it more than she intends, eyes drawn to the twig on her shelf whenever she works at her desk. Max's mind is his own, true, but they so often worked in effortless tandem that she hasn't felt the need to question his decisions in many hundreds of days. And yet what seems a silly trifle like any other has thrown her for a loop.

 

It seems to take a long time before Max's car kicks up dust on the horizon again, but when Furiosa takes a careful stock of the days she finds that not even forty have passed. It took him more than two hundred to return after the road war, circling 'round their perimeters like he was scouting out their weak spots, nearly getting himself blown up by a patrol for it. Nowadays he's left alone, a familiar sight haunting their territory every so often. (More often than not, as the days pile up, and for longer stretches)

The question sits on the back of her tongue when she greets him, foreheads leaned in to one another, a quiet moment before the collective storm of the Sisters descends. It tugs impatiently at her through the evening meal he's just in time for, almost rips out of her mouth when he parcels out what things he's brought back this time from his many pockets.

There's always seeds for the Dag, or else cuttings or roots or, once, an entire sapling, something new for her to try and grow; signs of life from wherever it is he's drifted through. Capable will get something practical, a replacement for something that has just broken or gone missing or been passed along, uncanny for someone who's been away. Wordburgers for Toast, usually, thin pulpy pages crackling as she leafs through them eagerly, puffing up dust and mold and char from fires he's snatched them out of. For Cheedo it's always a surprise, a map or a bolt of fabric or a polished handgun, nothing she would have asked for but always smiles over. He never hands anything off to Furiosa during these moments, no matter how the girls tease.

Still, the question of why flowers nags at her mind; if there was some meaning she was supposed to divine, some message in a language they apparently don't share.

She holds her tongue until it's past dark, the jovial mood of reunion winding down to contented sleepiness, Max trailing after her as always to her room. He sleeps better with someone watching his back, a fact she knows not from words he doesn't say but by the slight easing of circles under his eyes, how some mornings he stays abed even after she's had her fill of sleep. She sleeps better as well, knowing he's within reach, that he knows where enough of her weapons are stashed to be useful in an attack but that he does not know all of their locations, lets himself be knowingly vulnerable to her.

This fresh off the wastes it's a struggle to get him to even unbuckle his boots before he collapses into the mattress, nerves too keyed up by the constant threat of danger to consider sleeping anything less than fully dressed.

Furiosa unbuckles her prosthesis, finds her eyes catching on the dried blooms still lingering on her shelf, somehow not yet turned to kindling or whittled down or tossed into the slop jar. Instead it's been kept, like the rest of her silly impractical presents from him. She picks the twig up, the bark smooth and brittle beneath her fingertips, twirls it around contemplatively before holding it out for Max to see.

"Why flowers?" she asks, the question finally slipping off her tongue. It's the first time either of them have directly addressed any of the offerings and she feels a fission of regret that she might have upset the balance between them for the worse, by drawing attention to it.

He looks confused, squints to look at the branch, tracks the progress of a crumpled petal whisping off to fall to the ground.

She does not prompt Max further, just waits out the silence with a steady gaze. It's a foolish question, she knows, but it's been plaguing her for long enough that she feels she _needs_ to know if there's anything more to the gesture than what's on the surface.

"I, uh," he says, licks his lips. "They're pretty. Were." He shrugs, seeming mildly uncomfortable but without a trace of deception.

Furiosa doesn't know what answer she expected. She nods to herself as she replaces the twig on her shelf because of course there was nothing deeper to it than that, no secret commentary in the flowers.

A memory finally lights up in the recesses of her mind, something golden and hazy the way only things from her far, far past can be, and she thinks she knows why this gift set her off so unusually. She almost wants to laugh, how silly it sounds when she lines up the pieces.

"There was a custom, among my people," Furiosa lets the humor she's feeling suffuse her words, so Max will understand that she is not attempting to misread his intent any further. "Of giving flowers when it was… an invitation." There had been a rhyme, she thinks, of the colors and what they supposedly meant- the sort of thing children passed around eagerly, giggling at their daring and naughtiness. She can't remember what any of them might be, anymore.

He darts his eyes away, not seeming to find the accidental parallel humorous, and he scratches awkwardly at his ear. When she finally draws near enough to take off her boots and join him on the mattress she can see that there's a flush of red across his cheeks.

It occurs to Furiosa that Max might think she is implying that she expects it to stand for such an invitation from him.

"It's nothing," she says, to reassure him. She has, of course, contemplated the thought before (his mouth alone is enough to drive _anyone_ to distraction), but is content with what already exists between them. "Just a reminder of a custom for another place."

Max hums, and after a long awkward stretch finally relaxes again, settles down as she's grown used to, spine-to-spine to watch each others' blind sides.

 

When Furiosa wakes in the morning, there is a sprig of pea blossoms on the pillow next to her, picked recently enough that there's still traces of dew on their bright petals. It would not be a coincidence this second time, not when he is so careful with his actions, and a smile steals across her face.

'Red to go to bed,' she thinks idly, the sing-song words floating up through her memory, 'Pink and we'll kink; yellow for a show...'


End file.
